


wish I knew if he knew what I'm dreaming of

by firstaudrina



Category: Little Women (2019), Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: Crushes, F/M, Jealousy, Pining, Wistful gazing galore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:40:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23421811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: Five times Amy hoped Laurie would notice her + one time Laurie wanted to be noticed.
Relationships: Theodore Laurence/Amy March
Comments: 40
Kudos: 484
Collections: Kudos





	wish I knew if he knew what I'm dreaming of

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a prompt at the Comfort Comment Ficathon on DW.

I.

Amy was forever saying that no one was going to meet a man of much worth staying inside the house all the time, so imagine her surprise when one showed up on her doorstep with her sister’s arm around his shoulder. 

Of course, he wasn’t exactly a man. But she liked how he stood back from the fray with his hands clasped around his gloves, his gaze downturned like he was waiting to be allowed to look. He was tall and slim, fair in the firelight with dark hair ruffled by the cold wind. Amy thought he looked terribly romantic, like the kind of man Jo would write into one of her scandalous theatricals, the kind who would get his heart broken and take a turn for villainy in the third act before being struck down by someone more nefarious. 

Amy kept looking at him without meaning to. She would try to focus on Meg’s ankle or Marmee’s chatter but instead her eyes repeatedly slid sideways, catching each and every one of his furtive glances, the hungry way he took in the nightly chaos. Somehow she had crept forward on the rug, her shawl slipping from her shoulders, thinking — and not for the first time in this family — _look at me_. 

He looked at Jo shucking her skirt and Meg’s embarrassed flush and Beth’s hair red in the glow from the fire. He smiled at Marmee and blushed and studied his gloves. 

And he looked at Amy once, one glance of many, one moment in all that roaming. 

II.

Amy would have been perfectly humiliated if anyone had looked over her shoulder at the beach and seen the shape her pencil was sketching out on the paper: the narrow shoulders and draping sleeves, the cloud of dark hair. She kept it atop of stack of half-finished drawings so she could shuffle them around at any moment, hiding the picture of Laurie behind a half-dozen others more innocuous — Meg skipping stones along the shoreline with Mr. Brooke, Beth holding her hat down so the sea air didn’t whisk it off despite the pin. 

(Privately, Amy liked to imagine what would happen if Laurie peered over her shoulder and saw himself made up in her hand, with the faraway look of melancholy on his face and a waistcoat added because she, personally, found them more dashing. 

She thought he might be flattered.

But he did not look.)

III.

It was a great trial for the amusement of Jo’s shorn hair to be nearly ruined by one little thing, but Amy couldn’t help the sourness in her stomach at Jo throwing herself into Laurie’s arms and him being so obviously overcome with it, so glad to have a chance to show her how he felt in circumstances as dire as these. Amy had seen it before, at the beach and other times, when they would play in the snow or have their meetings of the mind in the garret. Laurie would extend some hopeful gesture and Jo would smack at his hands or pinch his cheek, sidling away from him like a nervous crab.

Amy was worried about Father, too. She didn’t want Marmee to leave, either. And perhaps she wouldn’t have shorn her curls for the Union, but she wouldn’t flinch and turn away if Laurie tried to pull her in close to his side, even if he did it like he did with Beth, warm and companionable. He had never done that with Amy, though he’d pulled her braids and tweaked her nose and given her little pats like she was Aunt March’s poodle. In the flurry of Marmee leaving and everything so tenuous, Amy thought it would be nice to heedlessly put her arms around Laurie’s neck and curl her fingers in his hair. And to feel his hands on her back, fingers spread like he wanted to really feel what it was like to hold onto her.

Like he did with Jo. 

IV.

When Meg married John — Amy felt quite certain, now that he was her brother, that it was only proper to call him John — Amy was _incandellent_ with joy, as she reminded herself several times and even said aloud, which led Jo to snort, “It’s _incandescent_ , cabbage head.”

Perhaps Amy should not have needed a reminder to be good, but she did. Every so often during the ceremony she would tap the turquoise ring that reminded her not to be selfish and look at Beth to remind herself to be well-behaved and kind, even when Jo let her wildflower bouquet droop so she could stick her hand in Laurie’s pocket. Amy pressed a kiss to Beth’s cheek when Meg kissed John and was gratified to see that Jo required both hands for clapping.

“Don’t be cross,” Beth murmured into her ear later, when the lawn was overtaken with dancing and Jo was draped around Laurie again, her arm fish-hooked about his neck in a style of dance Amy was unfamiliar with. Amy smoothed her pursed lips and touched the turquoise ring. She remembered that she felt nothing but pleasure for Meg and delight at having an excuse for flowers in her hair, that there were cakes to be eaten and wine to sneak. She did not complain and did not cast dark looks at Jo’s haphazard twirling, how beautiful her long hair looked as it fanned behind her. 

Amy had taken extra care with her braids that morning and tied them with new pink ribbons. And for what?

“I’m not cross,” Amy grumbled, crossly. She didn’t think she wholly imagined the knowing gleam in Beth’s eyes, though she did her best to ignore it. “I only wish Laurie had invited some of his better friends from college, so there’d be more people to dance with.”

Beth tsked. “Don’t sully the day with boys!” she demanded and led Amy, a little breathlessly and more fragile than she had been in the past, to the stamped-down grass to dance. And after a little while Amy forgot to be sullen, laughing as she and Beth made up dances of their own. 

She didn’t tell Laurie about Europe that day, because she knew his sympathies would be elsewhere and she could not have borne it.

V.

Amy saw Laurie once more before she went to Europe, and before he went, though she didn’t know he was going until she had already landed on foreign soil.

The sun was going down and he was standing at the fence looking back at his own house, the vibrancy of the sky behind it. She bounded up to him with excited steps, because she’d gotten an almost-new piece of luggage from cousin Florence and it wasn’t even ugly. It was soft brown leather and Amy was planning to paint little blue and yellow flowers on it, along with her name in nice looping letters. But there was no humor in Laurie’s face when she got to him. His eyes looked red, and slightly shiny.

She remembered the promise he’d made her when she went to stay with Aunt March, when Beth was sick. “Are you going to write me letters every day when I’m in Europe?” She made her voice teasing, leaning both hands on the fence between them and looking up at him through the ends of her untrimmed fringe. “I’ll need something to laugh at when Aunt March grumbling in my ear gets to be too much.” 

Laurie said nothing for a minute, but then spoke. “Yes, I am a figure to be laughed at.” 

Amy frowned, brows drawn together. “Laurie?” 

He pushed off the fence. “Have a good night, Amy,” he said, and nothing more. He did not look at her once. 

+I.

“Can you unbutton me, please?” 

Amy turned away from Laurie, distracted, her eyes darting to the windowpane and Fred Vaughn’s carriage beyond it. Laurie rose to do as told, a little dazed from all she’d had to say and the steady surety with which she’d said it. Age had brought more composure to Amy March than he had been quite prepared for and he felt chastised in a profound way, without the drunken bad humor of the ball to hide himself behind. 

Her back was to him. There were hazy little hairs at the nape of her neck, a strip of lace down the back of her dress leading smoothly to the row of buttons and large bow of her apron. Her hair was densely braided and wound about her head. _Unbutton me_ , she’d said, and Laurie wanted to undo the buttons and unravel the lace and unbind her hair so it fell around her shoulders. It happened very quick, the wanting, so quick that it was like tripping over a crack in the sidewalk or searching furiously for a book only to realize it had been in his hand the entire time. 

Amy bustled away for her cape. When she turned, he wanted her to see that somehow something had changed, to look in his eyes and know, even though he didn’t wholly understand himself yet. But she was still nervous over Fred and she went with minimal reassurance, leaving Laurie on the steps of her studio. Thinking that he had somehow found and lost her all at once.


End file.
